Solfleet: The Call of Duty (100 page)

Irritation erased his puzzlement as
Ted looked at his friend. “Who’s the rookie here?” he asked sharply. Then, as
he shifted his gaze back to the comm-panel, he added, “Of course I’m sure about
that.”

“Sorry,” Joey said meekly. He’d been
warned that Ted didn’t like being questioned where his job knowledge was
concerned. The guy had an apparently well earned reputation within the
specialty for being one of the best to ever do the job. In fact, at least
according to everyone else in the unit, he
was
the best. The problem was
that he knew it.

“I’m sorry, too,” Ted said after a
moment. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

And that was that. Spat over. “So...doesn’t
this tight beam message violate pretty much every regulation in the book
concerning communications with this place?” Joey asked.

“Damn right it does,” Ted confirmed.
“Someone’s in a lot of trouble.”

“Did their identification come up
yet?”

“Not yet, but when it does... Hold
on a second. It’s coming up now.” And a second later, “No way.” He initiated a
quick tracking check, just to be sure, then double and triple-checked the
results. “Oh my God.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think anyone will be
getting in trouble for this.”

“Why not?” Joey asked, his curiosity
piqued. “Come on, Ted. Who’s it from?”

Ted looked up at his friend. “It’s
from President Shakhar.”

* * *

“So where exactly are you headed,
Lieutenant?” Commander Akagi asked as he nudged Dylan aside, away from the
controls.

“Mars Orbital Shipyards,” Dylan
answered, figuring there wasn’t any harm in telling the commander just that
little bit. Especially when he was about to put his fate, and perhaps his very
life, into the guy’s hands.

“No can do, Lieutenant,” Akagi said,
shaking his head. “As I told you before, this Portal is focused directly on
Earth. I can’t put you down anywhere else.”

“Yes, sir, I know. I thought you
meant once I get there.” He looked down at the controls again. “How about
somewhere a few miles from Solfleet Surface Headquarters in mid to late April,
twenty-one sixty-eight?”

“I doubt I can set you down in that
specific a location or time, Lieutenant,” Akagi further advised him. “Something
more along the lines of ‘United States’ eastern seaboard, late sixty-seven to
early sixty-eight’ might be the best I can do.”

Dylan hoped Akagi was just yanking
his chain, antagonizing him, trying to make him even more nervous than he
already was. It would be a childish thing for him to do, but the alternative,
that he was being straightforward and honest, could mean that he might spend as
much as nine or ten
months
in the past before he was finally able to
come home again. Given that choice, Dylan would have preferred to have his
chain yanked.

“Well, as long as it’s no later than
April, sixty-eight,” he said. “Aim a little earlier if you have to. Just don’t
send me back short of that mark or this whole thing will be a waste of time.”

“You got it.”

“And please, Commander, try not to
drop me in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“I’ll try not to.” He replaced Dylan’s
hand on the destination symbol with his own, then called out in a much deeper
voice than was natural for him, “
Pel’Ka. Tre’Qoom boshe’ta vasim. Tusa.
Kapek e Tor’Rosha vej Rosha, Pen’to rhim con win, vet wona’sa torsh’kava vo
dusin, vet zimta kajj wen subeg ga vol revi.
”

The destination symbol began to glow
beneath his fingers. He pulled his hand away.

Dylan turned and gazed down at the
Portal, and as he watched with wonder, eerie wisps of thin, gray-white mist
began to appear, dancing lazily across the entire surface of its threshold.
Those wisps grew thicker, combined to form clouds, and began swirling in a
counter-clockwise direction like a miniature hurricane. A small eye even formed
in its center as the arms quickly expanded outward toward the rim, cycling repeatedly
through all the colors of the spectrum as they grew.

Dylan held his handcomp out to
record the phenomenon as the swirling clouds began to form images of what
appeared to be prehistoric Earth. He watched in awe as the eons passed before
his eyes. Centuries of volcanic activity passed in the blink of an eye. He bore
witness as the polar caps expanded and contracted over and over again with the
pulse of a heartbeat. The dinosaurs came and went. Then mankind appeared. Or
was he already there? He witnessed the great migration, the expansion of the continents,
the growth of cities, the horrors of hundreds of wars, the wonder of incredible
scientific achievements and untold numbers of other important historical
events, all of them blended together and compressed into mere moments. He
glimpsed an old three-man space capsule that he remembered seeing pictures of
in history books, but its image had barely registered in his mind when the
first starcruiser flashed before his eyes and was gone. A split second later
the images seemed to liquefy, to lose their cohesion, and the swirling clouds
of color reappeared and swallowed them into the vortex.

Dylan stopped recording and
immediately started the playback, intending to determine the precise moment
when he’d have to step out into the Portal’s event horizon. Only then did he
realize that the centuries had begun to slow as the programmed destination time
approached. But even when the targeted moment arrived, the decades were still
passing by far too quickly and he wasn’t able to pin down any specific,
accurate jump off point.

He set the handcomp to playback at
half speed and started it again, only to discover that events still passed by much
too fast for his needs. One quarter speed. Again, too fast. He stepped it down
to a mere hundredth of the originally recorded speed and tried again. Then a
thousandth. That looked better. He could probably work with that. As he waited
for history to play itself out again, he programmed a countdown timer to reach
zero at that moment when he would have to step out. He linked it to the
recording and synchronized it, then ran it through...twice. After one minor
adjustment it was perfect. He was ready.

Well, he was as ready as he ever
would
be.

He drew a deep breath and touched a
hand to the recall device, safely hidden away and sealed inside the lining of
his jacket, then exhaled.

“Ready, Lieutenant?” Akagi asked.

“Good luck, Dylan,” Benny said,
grinning at the familiarity of the scene that was playing itself out in front
of him. The Portal looked different from its fictional counterpart, of course,
but the similarities between what he was witnessing now and the episode of that
old science-fiction series from the 1960’s that he’d recently seen on
virtuavision were obvious.

Dylan looked back at his new friend
one last time, wishing he’d had more time to get to know him better. A little
odd, that wish, considering all the time they’d just spent cooped up in the
skiff together. “I don’t believe in luck, Benny,” he said, “but thank you.”

He tried to swallow, but his mouth
was suddenly very dry. “Commander...” He cleared his throat. “Let’s do this.”

“All right, Lieutenant. Walk out to
the center.”

“What?” Dylan asked, staring at
Akagi as if he’d just told him to step off a cliff.

Akagi stared right back at him. “Do
you want to do this or not?” he asked impatiently.

Actually, no. But he answered, “Yeah,
but I thought...”

“Then get out there.” When Dylan
didn’t move he said, “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You won’t fall through it until
you’re supposed to.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Akagi hesitated a moment, then
answered with a shrug, “Reasonably sure.”

“That’s not very reassuring,
Commander.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said as he
turned back to the controls. “It’s the best I can do.”

Dylan sighed, then asked Benny, “Are
you sure this thing isn’t just going to kill me?”

“If there was any chance of that
Admiral Hansen wouldn’t have sent you out here in the first place,” the old
captain assured him.

Dylan accepted that for whatever it
was worth—he trusted Benny well enough, despite the fact that he hadn’t really
known him for very long, although Admiral Hansen was another issue entirely—then
turned back to the Portal and gazed into the center of the weakening storm. As
he watched, what remained of the miniature hurricane fizzled into insignificant
dancing wisps of smoke once again, but the ‘surface’ beneath had taken on a
silvery metallic appearance. It looked like someone had filled a pool with
mercury. He swallowed hard then stepped out, tentatively, shifting his weight
from his rear foot to his front very slowly, and much to his relief found the mercury-like
surface to be as solid as the ground.

Another step. Still solid. He walked
out to the center as Akagi had instructed, gazing down at his feet with every short
step and noting that his movement through the smoke seemed to have no effect on
its haphazard currents. He glanced back at Akagi and nodded. At this point he
just wanted to get it over with.

Akagi touched his hand to the
destination symbol again and repeated the ancient phrase. “
Pel’Ka. Tre’Qoom
boshe’ta vasim. Tusa. Kapek e Tor’Rosha vej Rosha, Pen’to rhim con win, vet
wona’sa torsh’kava vo dusin, vet zimta kajj wen subeg ga vol revi.
”

Dylan stared unblinking at his
handcomp’s readout as the colorful hurricane began to reform around his ankles.
The storm clouds swirled faster and faster around his feet and they thickened
and expanded outward toward the Portal’s rim. Earth’s prehistoric oceans and
jungles and mountains and plains appeared together beneath him, morphing with
the passing centuries before they could even fully take form. His heart pounded
harder and harder as the millennia passed until it felt like it was going to
burst forth from his chest.

The timer appeared on the screen and
began its countdown. His heart thundered, feeling as though it might explode at
any second. His breaths grew shallow and rapid.

Double digits. Nineties... eighties...
seventies... sixties... fifties... forties... thirties... His hands were
shaking.

Twenties... He felt queasy.

Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen... He
wanted to back out.

“Commander!” someone hollered from a
distance.

Dylan looked up, but only for a
second before his gaze fell back to the handcomp. Two young crewmen were
approaching, running as fast as their legs would carry them.

Ten, nine, eight... Why was he doing
this? Why was he leaving Beth?

Seven... Why did he have to do this?

Six...

“Stop, Commander! Don’t let him go!”

Five... He glanced up at the young
men again. Why were they trying to stop him?

“Why not?” Akagi shouted.

All eyes, including Dylan’s,
converged on the two young men as they skidded to a halt just outside the
security field’s perimeter. “His mission isn’t authorized!”

One...

Akagi withdrew has hand as the
counter reached zero.

A second
CRACK
echoed through
the hall less than a second after the first.

“Stay right there, Admiral!” The MP
guarding Hansen ordered as he drew his sidearm and slapped the door release. He
charged into the hall, leaving the admiral unguarded as well as unrestrained,
and didn’t take the time to close the door behind him.

Gunshots, Hansen knew. Double tap with
a pulse-pistol. No doubt about it. Nothing else sounded quite the same.

“What happened?” he heard his guard
inquire.

“She grabbed a weapon!” a woman shouted
in response, obviously hyped up. “I didn’t have any choice!”

“
No!
” another woman screamed
in horror. “
Oh my God! No!
”

“Stay away from her, ma’am!”

“
No! Let me go!
” the woman
screamed. “
No, God! Liz!
”

Liz? Royer!

Hansen bolted from his chair and
dashed into the hall to find his MP guard hauling an obviously distraught woman
off the floor to her feet. It was Karen, he realized even before he saw her
face. Liz’s wife, crying uncontrollably, screaming Liz’s name over and over, struggling
against the MP’s efforts to restrain her. Royer lay face up and motionless on
the floor in front of them, sprawled across the width of the hall in a rapidly
expanding pool of blood with her hands cuffed in front of her. Another MP, a
stocky female bleeding profusely from her mouth and nose, stood frozen at Liz’s
feet and stared down her pulse-pistol’s sights at her, seemingly in shock.

“What the hell did you do?” Hansen
demanded as he rushed forward. The female MP snapped out of it instantly,
holstered her weapon and stepped into his path, raising her hands to stop him.
But he wasn’t about to be stopped. He slapped her hands aside and shoved her
out of his way, perhaps more violently than was necessary but he didn’t care
about that, and dropped to his knees at Liz’s side as the MP stumbled over her feet
and fell backwards to the floor.

“Don’t touch her, Admiral!” the burly
MP who’d been guarding him shouted. “This is a crime scene!” But he still had
his hands full trying keep Karen under control and couldn’t do anything to stop
him.

Hansen saw the standard Military
Police-issue pistol lying on the floor beside her and realized instantly what
must have happened. “Aw Liz, what did you do?” he quietly asked as he gazed
into her lifeless eyes and touched his fingertips to the side of her throat.
She had no discernible pulse but blood was still oozing from the button-sized
holes in the center of her chest, so he knew there was still a chance to save
her. He tilted her head back and pinched her nostrils, then leaned down, sealed
his mouth over hers, and blew two quick breaths, watching for the rise and fall
of her chest. Then he slid to his left—all that blood on the floor made it easy—pulled
her bloodstained bra up out of the way, positioned his hands over her sternum,
and started CPR, but bright red blood streamed from her wounds like water from
a fountain with his first compression.